


Mourning Violet

by sensitivebore



Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-22
Updated: 2013-01-22
Packaged: 2017-11-26 11:41:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/650153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sensitivebore/pseuds/sensitivebore
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carson and Hughes, wine among the roses.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mourning Violet

He is standing alone in her rose garden, among all of her beloved bushes and flowers and shrubberies. Thinking about nothing, really; he cries no tears for her death, hadn't needed to swallow a single sob during her funeral. He's glad of that, it would have been appalling to her to have servants caterwauling and carrying on. Carson thinks about her dying, about what it means to them, to him.

It means, to him, that everything is changing. That the old guard is most definitely on its way out with its traditions and rules and codes of conduct; that the new generation is taking over with its shorter hemlines and looser ties and casual love affairs. He doesn't know if it's good, or bad, or something found between. He knows that he is the old guard, through and through, that he will not make a seamless transition. Any transition. The Dowager had been seventy-eight when she died.

He is sixty-four. He is now the oldest person in Downton.

There are soft steps behind him and the metallic chime of keys and she has come to find him; of course she has, doesn't she always? Isn't she always there when he reaches for her?

With his heart that is, with his mind. Never with his hands.

She is standing beside him now and she has two glasses, a bottle of something. Elsie is still in her severe black mourning dress, not a speck of light to be seen anywhere on it besides those silver streamers on her hip. She surveys the garden without speaking, hands him a wine glass. Doesn't ask him how he is, doesn't offer him platitudes.

"Do you know, Mr. Carson, several years ago when I was overseeing spring cleaning at Dower House, Her Ladyship gave me this bottle of wine as a gift. And do you know what she said to me?"

She frees the stopper, fills his glass almost to the rim. Does the same with her own. Doesn't wait for him to answer her rhetorical question.

"She said, Mrs. Hughes, on the day I die, I want you to open this wine and drink the entire bottle, and never pretend for a moment that we liked each other." Elsie takes a long swallow from her glass, arches her brows as the lovely smooth taste. "And I intend on doing just that. You may join me, if you like. I'd like it if you would."

Carson has no problem believing the story; in fact, he's surprised he hadn't overheard it before now. It was true, the two women had a pleasant, ongoing dislike for one another since the day Mrs. Hughes arrived at Downton. She found Violet to be rude, imperious, ridiculously demanding, cosseted. He knew, and was sure Elsie knew by now, had heard it time and again from the maids that were always thoroughly informed of it by the Dowager, that she found Elsie to be unfriendly, impersonal, altogether too foreign for the thoroughly English house.

They have argued about it before, lightly, she and him. She insisted on calling her an old bat — which sometimes expanded to old bitch if she had been particularly cruel to one of Elsie's maids — and he insisted that she deserved more respect, more servility. Elsie would laugh at him, tell him that he was blind when it came to Violet, that he couldn't see what a hateful old thing she was because he was enamored with her title, her lineage, her position.

He tastes the wine, is also surprised by the sweet, mellow honey of it. Carson takes the bottle from her, studies the label. It's an African wine, an Ethiopian wine to be exact, made with honey, and it's delicious, decadent. Extremely strong but somehow remarkably light.

Quietly, without ceremony, he steps closer to her so their shoulders are just about brushing, almost, almost touching but not quite. Almost tender. Almost loving. Almost husbandly.

But not quite.

"The times are changing, Mrs. Hughes." It's a banal thing to say, he knows, but it's what he's thinking, it's all that he's been thinking all day, ever since the doctor had come to the house to report her death in the early morning hours. "Changing so fast."

Elsie takes another long draught from her glass, nods in agreement. She's not saying much, and he slowly realizes that she's just being with him right now. Nothing to say, nothing to do, just — being. He studies the side of her face as she gazes out, squinting slightly, over the garden, over the lawns. Watches her take a drink, watches how the smooth column of her throat is revealed when she tips her head back, how a drop of the golden wine clung to her bottom lip when she lowered the glass.

He turns his head back to the flowers, drinks.

They stand looking at Violet's roses and drink the wine. Two glasses each, then three, they polish off the bottle together and decide they should head inside, should walk the gravel path through the garden around the side of the house to the back doors.

"I'm not being loud, you're being loud!"

"I'm never loud."

"You are  _always_  loud, you can't help it with that voice."

At one point, she stumbles a bit, falls against him. Smothers her giggles as he rights her, chuckling. Neither of them notice that he doesn't let go of her hand. Both of them pretend not to notice.

Both of them also pretend not to notice that they are intoxicated. Quite so.

They walk along, suppressing ridiculous laughter, trying very hard to look serious, to walk gracefully, stately, as they always do. At one point, he picks her a pink rose. She tucks it into her hair. For some reason, they both find that extremely funny, as well. They wind through the garden and at some point, he kisses her there among the flowers. Kisses her because she is so very lovely and they are full of wine and uncertainty and he is sad and she is philosophical and the times, well, they are a-changing. Kisses her with a hot wine mouth and she welcomes it, returns it, hugs him to her as best she can with one hand cupping two wine glasses and the other holding the empty bottle. Kisses him and whispers something to him and he doesn't argue, doesn't put up any sort of trouble, because he is old and getting older and everything he has known and lived inside of is being turned inside out so what's the point in this never-ending denial anyway? He just agrees, agrees wholeheartedly, without second thoughts and it might be the wine or the roses or the melancholy in his heart, but he doesn't want to think about it for once. Just lets her lead him down the footpath to the potting shed, lets her lead him inside where he shuts the door behind them.

Shuts the door and they are in dim golden light that falls through the single fogged window, covered in mist from the humidity of the saplings and the seedlings carefully lined on shelves and he's kissing her again, shoving the glasses and the bottle into a nearby alcove so her hands are free to move over his body with fluttering fingers, with warm palms and it smells of good earth and green living things and she smells of clean soap and tart lemon and they kiss, harder, hungrier, her arms are wrapped tightly around his neck now.

They do not close their eyes. They've waited too long and neither of them have childish notions about romance or whatever it is that closed eyes are supposed to represent; they watch each others eyes darken, shift, he watches the blood rush to her cheeks and redden them beautifully. The kisses are long and deep with her small moans and his demanding breaths, with tender bites and sliding tongues; she licks the inside of his mouth and his hands find the pretty gentle swell of her bottom and fondle with rough, aggressive motions. Her fingers slide over his shoulders, down his back and she mirrors his motions and they both groan against the feeling of the slow grind, she pushes her hips hard against his pelvis and he returns the push and he has the presence of mind to pull his mouth away, press it against her ear.

"We're both drunk."

She bites his neck, repeats her slide and twist against him.

"I know, Mr. Carson. But not very much, really."

He realizes she's right, they are both tipsy and in their cups, certainly, both well over the respectable limit, but his mind is clear and hers seems to be, as well, so there can be no convenient excuses later, tomorrow, next week. There can be no shifting of responsibility or avoidance of acceptance. He has to choose now, he has to choose to be with her. To take this moment, to make this love.

He chooses it.

They continue to kiss, to touch, but they are careful not to remove clothing because the potting shed is no place for their formal clothes, they are not so far gone as to think it will be acceptable to wander in covered in earth. Instead, she reaches beneath his shirt, he unbuttons her dress, is careful to pull it down only to her waist. She unhooks her corset just far enough to bare her breasts to him in the sweet, fragrant air and his hands and mouth are delightfully rough, suckling hard at the dark nipples as she tugs at his hair, grips the back of his neck to hold him there, whimpers. When it's too much for her, for both of them, she pushes him away and he releases her skin reluctantly, protesting, and she laughs, turns in his arms.

Tries to tell himself that it's only because laying on the floor would dirty her gown, get dust in her hair. Tries to tell himself it's just practical, but if he's truthful — and right now he is — this is unbearably good, unbearably dark and delicious to have her sprawled down across the empty table, to finally bunch up the voluminous skirts, jerk down the pretty delicate knickers. He would feel wrong, savage, perhaps if she were passive, but she isn't passive, she's encouraging him with hotly whispered words, shaking little pleas. Perhaps he'd feel wrong about it if she were simply yielding, but she isn't simply yielding, she's slipping a hand between her legs to open the lovely soft labial folds, to show him her readiness, and he doesn't wait then but pushes into her hard, forces himself past the initial tight resistance and her low scream of gratification is his undoing. If he had any subtlety or conscious control left, that guttural cry has destroyed it and she is good, she is so good, so hot and tight around him as he rams into her over and again, takes her, as she takes him, as they finally have one another after ten, eleven, twelve long years of averted glances and balled fists and measured breaths.

She's laughing now, laughing through her gasps and shuddering moans and her laughter is contagious; he smiles and brushes her hair back from her face so he can see the pretty profile pressed as it is against the table and that touch, that tender cherishing little gesture is what she needs to let go and she comes, her nails scrabbling for purchase on the wood beneath them; she comes crying out to him, crying to God, conflating them, confusing them, begging him not to stop, and his release isn't long after that, how could it be after she has sobbed out words of love as he buries his cock inside her again and again, sheathing completely before withdrawing and plunging, how can he not follow her in a last hard push and spill his release, spill his own groaned worshipful cries against her shoulder, heaving and shaking with the force of it all.

They smile, afterwards. When they are helping each other stand with weak legs, when they straight one another's clothing. He buttons her dress, she reties his cravat. He pushes a few stray pins back into her chignon, she straightens his vest, his jacket lapels. They smile, laugh a little. He cups her cheek in his hand, she touches the side of his neck. Elsie lifts herself on her toes, kisses his mouth. Smiles.

Violet's death has made him feel old today, yes, but this woman has sought him out, found him, and made him whole again. Has stripped away all of the ponderous weight of the house and the uniform and the expectations, has asked only for the body and the essence that is his own. No white tie, no gloves. She asked only that he come to her with honest hard kisses and clean hands and truth and offered him in return her honeyed lips and her beautiful breasts and the exquisite silken depths of her, the hypnotic sounds of love that poured from her throat when he made her come.

Has given him all that, and with it, his strength back. Has put the almost arrogant lift back in his jaw, the sharp square back in his carriage, the crisp snap in his stride.

Loving her, he thinks as they walk to the house together, she humming a little song, is a way of staying young. Of changing with the times.

The world is moving on, and they have chosen now, with this day, with this act, to move with it. Chosen to not become things of the past, dusty relics relegated to attics and libraries, have chosen this over archaic codes of manners and ridiculously regimented lives.

Chosen messy and complicated love, she and him, consummated in a warm garden shed of all places, because it never goes out of style.


End file.
